Sony has taken the wraps off a virtual reality headset gizmo designed to fully immerse players in PlayStation 4 games, whether they’re battling a dragon, piloting a fighter jet or taking up arms against an alien menace.

Currently dubbed Project Morpheus, the long-rumoured head-mounted display was officially unveiled this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. No price or release date has been set, with Sony simply saying they’re looking at a commercial launch for the product as soon as possible.

“This is the culmination of our work for three-plus years and realizes our vision of VR for games,” Sony Computer Entertainment’s Shuhei Yoshida said at the company’s Driving the Future of Innovation panel, where Morpheus was unveiled.

The futuristic-looking black and white headset will offer a first-person view that occupies most of the player’s field of vision, with built-in sensors that track the player’s head movements, eliminating the need to use a gamepad joystick to control where the player’s avatar is looking.

Sony said the headset will also use advanced 3D audio processing techniques, giving the illusion of sound coming from all sides the player, as well as above and below.

When combined with the PlayStation Move motion-sensing controller, Morpheus could potentially give PS4 gamers the experience of stepping inside a virtual world and wielding a sword as though they were actually holding it in their hands, although many games will still require a standard controller to allow players to move their avatars around the game world.

Sony said Morpheus could also have non-gaming uses, such as virtual tourism. One of the demonstrations being shown at the Game Developers Conference has users exploring a digital recreation of the surface of Mars.

From Tron to The Matrix to Inception, virtual reality does indeed have a sexy sci-fi vibe, but until now it’s remained a relatively niche experience due to the bulk and cost of the head-mounted displays, as well as their lack of visual fidelity.

Sony’s announcement comes as pioneering VR firm Oculus continues to refine its own years-in-the-making Oculus Rift gaming headset, which has generated significant buzz for overcoming many of the obstacles to virtual reality gaming. There’s been no price or release date announced for the Oculus Rift, which is designed to work with PC games, but prototype development kits sell for $350.